After watching The Righteous Babes in class today, a lot of the discussion was geared towards the female musicians’ “aggressive”  and “angry” nature. While I noted in class that part of this comes from the era the film dealt with and certain genres of music that were more popular then than they are now, I wanted to point out an example of how a current musician in a different genre advocates for feminism without the type of “anger” we were referring to.

I might be severely pointing out my out-of-centerness with my interests in music, but the film and our discussion after very much reminded me of an essay written by Lauren Mayberry, lead singer for the indie group CHVRCHES, last year in response to the misogyny she received online. Here’s the essay (fair warning: some of the comments she quotes are pretty vile). Even if you’re unfamiliar with the group, she still has a lot of great points about the type of harassment she receives as a female musician, especially online.  (Also of note: When I saw them live about half a year after this article came out, the men in the crowd constantly catcalled Lauren in between songs. This behavior is prevalent no matter the woman or the genre of music.)

As I heard more of the class’s reactions to The Righteous Babes and thought more about Lauren and this essay, I began to notice how the band’s lyrics matched the attitude the class attached of those of the musicians in the film, even though CHVRCHES is much more firmly in pop territory than the film’s rock musicians. In fact, some of their songs, such on the song “Gun,” feature far more explicit threats and anger than any of the music we heard in the film we watched. It might be easy to ascribe the alternative and punk genres as “angrier” subsets of music, but that would mean we’d be attaching an interpretation to music based on tone alone rather than reading into lyrics as well. I’m sure you can find the same results if you look into songs by Beyoncé or Nicki Minaj or Lady Gaga. If anything, we might miss these mostly because the mood these songs evoke distract us from their true meaning. The songs featured in The Righteous Babes were upfront, whereas these pop songs are the “whispers” Sinead O’Connor talked about.